## 3.3. I Never Metacharacter I Didn't Like

Table 3.4 lists interesting examples of regular expressions, many of which have been described in this chapter.

#### Table 3.4. Useful Regular Expressions

Item | Regular Expression
--- | ---
Postal Abbreviation for State | [A-Z][A-Z]
City, State | ^.*,[A-Z][A-Z]
City, State, Zip (POSIX egrep) | ^.*,[A-Z][A-Z][0-9]{5}(-[0-9]{4})?
Month, Day, Year | [A-Z][a-z]\{3,9\}[0-9]\{1,2\},[0-9]\{4\}
U.S. Social Security Number | [0-9]\{3\}-[0-9]\{2\}-[0-9]\{4\}
North-American Local Telephone | [0-9]\{3\}-[0-9]\{4\}
Formatted Dollar Amounts | \$[0-9]*\.[0-9][0-9]
troff In-line Font Requests | \\f[(BIRP]C*[BW]*
troff Requests | ^\.[a-z]\{2\}
troff Macros | ^\.[A-Z12].
troff Macro with arguments | ^\.[A-Z12].".*"
HTML In-line Codes | <[^>]*>
Ventura Publisher Style Codes | ^@.*=.*
Match blank lines | ^$
Match entire line | ^.*$
Match one or more spaces | *

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